By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

“Summertime … and the living is easy,” wrote George and Ira Gershwin in their masterpiece Porgy and Bess. Here in Charleston, however, which coincidentally was the setting for America’s first and arguably greatest opera, summer is a time when first- and second-year law students are striving to prove themselves to future employers, and law firms are taking a hard, three-month look at the talent in their midst. That’s never been truer than this year when, in addition to the University of South Carolina, Duke, Emory and other perennial favorites, local law firms have the opportunity to choose from the first crop of second-year students from the Charleston School of Law. “While we recruit from a host of law schools, having the Charleston School of Law become established gives us a pool of local talent to do the tasks we don’t necessarily want to do ourselves and have to bill for,” said attorney Molly Hughes of Nexen Pruet Adams Kleemeiers LLC. “That’s excited the legal community here and inspired a lot of interaction between area lawyers and the students.” In the legal profession, interns are typically referred to as either summer associates or law clerks. 1Ls, as first-year law students are called, have spent a year honing legal research and writing skills and often strive to secure full-summer positions. Second-year students, 2Ls, with sharpened research skills and far more knowledge of specific areas of law, prefer to split their summers between two firms. This affords them the opportunity to acquire as much varied experience as possible before entering the legal job market and, theoretically, increases their chances of being offered a full-time position by one of the firms following graduation. Hughes served as Nexen Pruet’s chief recruiter of college students for three years before handing the baton over to fellow attorney Bruce Wallace. The firm typically schedules a day of interviews at the law schools it recruits from and assigns tasks depending upon how many years of law school the students have completed, Hughes said.

Litigators in the making

“Summer law clerks tend to be more involved in litigation-type work because litigation lends itself more readily to research and other finite projects,” she said. “However, if a student has a particular interest in a specific area of law, like transactional work, we do what we can to see that they get plenty of exposure to that. “The form a clerkship takes really is dependent on the student’s interests, the firm’s interests and the firm’s needs,” Hughes continued. “In addition to the research and writing that’s always so much a part of these programs, we also want our clerks to get a feel for the practice of law by attending depositions, hearings, trials, those kinds of situations.” Attorney Claire Xidis, who recruits for Motley Rice LLC’s Charleston headquarters, said the number of law clerks the firm hires is entirely dependent on its summer caseload. Last summer it hired two law clerks. This year it hired six, she said. “What we look for is candidates with a strong academic background and who have a track record of being involved in school activities,” Xidis said. “We also take a look at the whole picture, for those who have had interesting life experiences and the like.” Xidis described the tasks given to law clerks as “heavy-duty assignments. “Sometimes it’s research; sometimes writing; sometimes it’s helping out with an investigation,” she said. “At Motley Rice, we do a lot of different kinds of cases and are passionate about the kinds of cases we do, and so we want to work with clerks that understand the nature of our firm and can get fired up about that kind of work.”

Golden opportunities

While law firms can’t offer a permanent job to every law clerk hired for a summer, internship programs are golden opportunities for evaluating the talent that’s out there, Hughes said. “Think about it: In most hiring situations, the employer conducts a series of discreet interviews but is still, in effect, making an educated guess about the person it’s offering a job to,” she explained. “In our profession, clerkships really give the firm the opportunity to see work product and get to know prospective future hires as people. “Also, clerkships help focus the student’s interest. They may decide the type of law this firm or another specializes in isn’t what they want to do. That, in turn, helps the hiring process because it eliminates applications from those who might ultimately be happier at another practice.” When a firm sees an intern work for three months, it gives the firm a sense of whether that person is going to mesh with the company, Xidis said. “In our clerkship program, we make sure individual clerks are exposed to our different practice groups, not just so they have a well-rounded experience, but also because a lot of different people here will have exposure to them,” she said. Given the time-intensive nature of the profession, having someone to pitch in and help with the research is a “huge help,” Hughes said. Xidis agreed. “As an attorney, anytime I can take something off my plate, that’s a huge help,” she said. “We’re a firm that’s got a lot of irons in the fire, and it’s great for we attorneys if we can hand off the research or a periphery issue to a clerk and know they’ll dedicate themselves to it fully and take it on exhaustively.” Hughes added there are ancillary benefits to hiring summer clerks. “The legal community of Charleston has a summer softball league,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m convinced I was hired as a clerk because I appear remotely athletic. It was only after they hired me that they learned I stunk at softball.” Richard Gershon, dean and professor at the Charleston School of Law, said he believes summer clerkships are important to his students on a number of levels. “In terms of professional training, they provide the student with the opportunity to work with real lawyers and real clients,” Gershon said. “We can teach them a lot in the classroom, but they can learn so much more with live clients. “At the same time, they’re also a good chance for our students to get a flavor for different kinds of law, to see what they like and, in some case, what areas of law and types of firms they wouldn’t like to work in,” he said.

Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.

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